5 School Counseling Activities Using Toilet Paper Tubes

At Confident Counselors, we love using materials we have at school or home for school counseling crafts. We’ve used coffee filters and tissue boxes, and now we’ve found what to do with those empty toilet paper tubes.

Writing a post on using toilet paper tubes for counseling activities required a great deal of self-restraint on my part. Do you know just how many opportunities there are to make potty puns when writing 500 words on toilet paper rolls? The answer is a LOT. Especially for a woman whose usual demographic is third grade boys. Sorry. Let’s get down to business.

At school I have an entire cabinet filled with recycled items (some might say “trash”) to use for various counseling activities and projects. Toilet paper tubes are among my favorite. I use them to make superhero cuffs for my social superheroes and dragon blowers for my worry ninjas, but for this post I needed to go to Pinterest to find three more ideas. Boy, did Pinterest deliver! Who knew there were so many creative ways to use these gray cardboard gems?

Emotions Dolls

Danya Banya has a great tutorial on creating Emotion Dolls that are perfect for helping younger kids learn to identify and express feelings. Children can choose the doll that feels the same way they feel, or use them like puppets to act out a scenario.

Blowers

Blowers help students focus their breath, so you can use them for mindfulness or self-calming lessons. Decorate them any number of ways to fit in with your theme. Kristina, from Art of Social Work, has a simple tutorial for mindful breathing wands. For my worry ninja activity, my group makes this dragon blower from One Little Project.

Pillow Box

Oh, the things you can do with Pillow Boxes! Decorate with markers, paint, self-stick felt, washi tape, stickers, or adhesive gems.  A few examples of things to put inside: positive affirmations, a good luck charm, a small stress fidget like a relaxation stone, a picture of someone the child misses (e.g., a parent at home, someone who is in jail or the hospital, or someone who has died), notes of love or encouragement, or wishes. This tutorial from The Balance makes it easy.

Superhero Cuffs

My social superheroes have been making Superhero Cuffs, like the ones from Sewing in No Man’s Land, as part of their superhero costumes for three or four years. Check out ten reasons you should use superhero themes in school counseling. 

Unique Butterflies

Crafty Morning and Twig and Toadstool have perfect examples of toilet paper tube Butterflies. They will be a perfect craftivity when we read Charlie the Caterpillar. You could use them with any lesson about self-esteem, uniqueness, transitions, or new beginnings.

I hope you find some inspiration here for your own school counseling crafts. Let’s cross our fingers that the new tubeless toilet paper doesn’t ever catch on!

Other School Counseling Crafts Posts

5 Ways to Use Coffee Filters from Counselor Keri.

5 Ways to Use Tissue Boxes from Mental Fills.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click the link and purchase the item, we will receive a small commission which helps us run the site. With that said, we only recommend items we have found useful in our own practice.